Concurrent Editing Of Document By Multiple Clients

Abstract

A computing system concurrently executes a builder thread and a reader thread. The builder thread modifies a document by modifying an active representation of the document. The reader thread perform operations regarding the document using a non-active representation of the document. The active representation of the document and the non-active representation of the document are stored in a memory of the computing system. The active representation of the document and the non-active representation of the document do not include different copies in the memory of the same data. When reading data in the non-active representation of the document, logical consistency is ensured without locking any data in the non-active representation of the document.

Description

[0001] This application is a divisional application of the invention patent application with the filing date of May 16, 2011 and the application number of 201180025941.5. Background technique [0002] Electronic documents are ubiquitous in today's work environment. For example, millions of people use and generate word processing documents, spreadsheet documents, and other kinds of documents every day. As the importance of electronic documents increases, software applications are expected to provide more powerful tools for manipulating electronic documents. For example, word processing applications are expected to provide accurate grammar and spell checking tools. [0003] However, such tools are often computationally expensive. Since such tools are computationally intensive, using such tools can cause delays that are easily noticed by the user. Such delays can cause user frustration and should therefore be minimized. [0004] In recent years, the performance of computers h...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Forcing another thread to wait causes a delay that is easily detectable by the user

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